March Madness Challenge!

March 23, 2016

It’s that time of year: Daylight no longer ends before 5pm, the weather changes by the minute, and college basketball takes center stage! We’re all familiar with creating brackets and competing with our friends and coworkers to see who picks the most winners, but what can we do beyond simple estimation to engage those of all ages during the tournament?

For early learners, recognizing attributes – something that tells us about an object such as shape, color, or size – helps build essential skills of comparison and categorization. And any opportunity to count – buttons on a shirt, cars on the road or even number of basketball teams with birds as a mascot – is an opportunity to use math language in the home. We can easily bring these concepts and more into the home during March Madness by talking about counting or discussing the attributes of each team in the tourney! Use the Zeno March Madness worksheet to get you started:

Click on the image for a downloadable PDF.

We’d love to hear about the ways you are using March Madness to engage the kids in your life in math! Share your experience with us in the comments section.